Selling the Price Increase

6Relationships Matter

Here is a blinding flash of the obvious: The effort you put into selling price increases doesn't matter if you lose your customers or their future orders in the process.

Chasing your good customers and high-value accounts into the arms of your competitors is bad business. But, so is allowing profits to suffer because you are afraid to get the prices you deserve, for the value you are delivering, because you worry you'll lose your customers.

Price Increase Initiatives Are Dual Focused

No matter if you are involved in a broad price increase campaign or selling a price increase to a targeted account, your mission is to get the highest prices you can, AND retain your customer and orders. To accomplish your mission, both of these things must be true at the same time. It is a dual focus. This can be a delicate balance, which is exactly why your company needs YOU to sell these price increases.

You are the one person with the most intimate knowledge of and deepest relationships with your customers. You are a professional who can sell the price increase and get customers to accept it while protecting the long-term relationship.

But, you already know this. Therefore, my objective in this section is to help you gain awareness of the various pitfalls you'll face when approaching customers with price increases that can cause them to:

• Argue you out of it.
• Negotiate it down.
• Refuse to pay it.
• Stop ordering.
• Leave you for a competitor.

Navigating Imperfection